Saturday, May 19, 2007

Sad, sad, sad.

Dear beloved paramount leader of our organization will be leaving us at the end of the summer, and our unit organized a farewell dinner for him.

Someone had the good sense/humour/heart to put together a powerpoint presentation to be shown after wine and cheese and before the dinner. This someone and someone else decided that me and a research student would be most suitable candidates to provide some running commentary for the slides. Only God knows what over-proofed dough was going on in their minds for that decision to come about. I do not know paramount leader well; but he had really done a lot for the organization and is genuinely loved by the masses. I didn't feel I have an excuse to get out of this one.

The funny thing is, everyone was saying

OH! this is the task for the pretty girls!

You, and the 5'9" oval faced fair skinned skinny legged shiny haired one!

I said, GIRL? Hahahah.... you so very funny. Stop it now you before me sides split and me guts spill all over this shiny elevator floor.

I am not adverse to being called pretty, ridiculous as that is, but GIRL I certainly am not! This other "girl" is most certifialy a girl, and I am at least 15 years her senior.

But what the heck, this is not the first time I been given a task simply because I'm female and don't look like a grizzly bear.

Anyhow, this "slide show", which I was only able to look at two hours before the event, consists of pictures. Not candid or glam shots, but your bog standard "event" shots where everyone feels like they have to put on their standard grins and look as bland as possible whilst standing under a banner. Half of them don't even have the paramount leader in it for pear's sprinkling sakes!

The plumming thing lasts 15 glorious minutes. Ten complete seconds for each picture, to the background of the Moonlight Sonata. My partner, the other pretty girl, the other "MC", showed up for the "rehearsal" all tarted up, tiara, satin dress, and everything. I had no idea what kind of commentary I could give. It was dire as fuck and the worst part is I didn't really give a durian.

Downing a fair bit of wine during the wine and cheese hour helped, thank goodness, and my witty comments seemed to have gone down well ("Here is a photo of Sandra and Jonathan at the 9th International Conference on Recuperating Crop Circles. Check out the vegetataion on Jon's shirt! Hey Jon we didn't realise you are a cannibis lover!" "As we can all recall, this is from the unit retreat in the Bahamas two years ago; lovely boat trip that was. It's amazing how Cameron's wig managed to stay on in that wind!"....et cetera)

The other pretty girl started slyly shifted away from me three minutes into the show. By the end of it, she was sitting down at the table, as far away from me as possibly without actually leaving the room. Her commentaries were limited to straight reading off the captions ("Our paramount leader at a dinner reception"; "Our paramount leader at the research awards ceremony").

This is all in hindsight, obviously. Me, at the time, I felt as if I was the wittiest person ever lived. Yes, it was that sad. And I wasn't even drunk.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Girl, I don't know what your deal is, but I really like your writing. You're a cat-person, or an honorary cat-person.